Sitecore.Sitemap.Xml

Sitecore module to automatically generate sitemap.xml files based on CMS content. Tried and tested on Sitecore CMS 7.0, 7.2, 7.5 and Sitecore XP8.

Installation from source

5 easy steps:

• Download source;
• Copy in the project's /lib directory the Sitecore assemblies mentioned in the readme file;
• Add the Sitemap.Xml project as an existing project in your solution;
• Reference the project in your main Sitecore solution;
• Edit your web.config to include the Sitemap.Xml IIS handler (see following section).

Changes in web.config

You need to add the Sitemap.Xml IIS handler in your web.config file. This needs to be done in two sections.

system.webServer

In system.webServer/handlers, add the following handler at the end:

<!-- sitemap.xml: START -->
<add verb="GET" path="sitemap.xml" 
  type="LD.Sitemap.Xml.SitemapHandler, Sitemap.Xml" 
  name="LD.Sitemap.Xml"/>
<!-- sitemap.xml: END -->

system.web

In system.web/httpHandlers, add the following handler at the end:

<!-- sitemap.xml: START -->
<add verb="GET" path="sitemap.xml" type="LD.Sitemap.Xml.SitemapHandler, Sitemap.Xml"/>
<!-- sitemap.xml: END -->

Configuration

The project includes a file called Sitemap.Xml.config in its App_Config/Include folder. If you reference this project in your main Sitecore solution project, then this file should be copied to your project's App_Config/Include directory. You can use this skeleton configuration to configure the module.

The configuration file allows for multiple managed websites. Its main node, <sitemap>, allows for one or more <site> elements, each one with a name required attribute, which must match the name of one of your Sitecore managed websites, an embedLanguage optional attribute (see the section on default behavior for more information), and a combination of the elements described next. The handler indexes content under and including the item specified as start item for the corresponding managed website.

site/includeTemplates

A list of template IDs. The handler's output includes managed website items whose template ID matches exactly one of the IDs specified in this list. Example:

<site name="demo">
  <includeTemplates>
    <template>{1C637B7D-FFBE-472B-A905-D48BB3B0BC26}</template>
    <template>{E1D0BDDE-18CF-4063-A9A1-8A6C40095BFA}</template>
  </includeTemplates>
</site>

site/includeBaseTemplates

A list of template IDs. The handler's output includes managed website items whose template ID, or one of their base template IDs, matches exactly one of the IDs specified in this list. Example:

<site name="demo">
  <includeBaseTemplates>
    <template>{7F91172F-22AB-404E-AF61-AD64E0BA1DF4}</template>
  </includeBaseTemplates>
</site>

Caveat: you should make sure that your ContentSearch index indexes all item templates. See the section on default behavior and extensibility, below.

site/excludeItems

A list of item IDs. The handler's output excludes managed website items whose item IDs match exactly one of the IDs specified in this list, even if their template IDs match one of the IDs in the previous configuration nodes. Example:

<site name="demo">
  <excludeItems>
    <item>{0790EAB8-466F-46CA-B29C-49D10505AC2E}</item>
  </excludeItems>
</site>

Default behavior and extensibility

The handler produces its output by executing a pipeline, also defined in Sitemap.Xml.config, called createSitemapXml. The pipeline consisits of a single pipeline processor, which provides you with default behavior, i.e. it knows how to read and make sense of the configuration documented in the previous section.

Default behavior

To produce its output it uses ContentSearch to fetch the items that conform to the template/item restrictions you have configured. The pipeline processor is defined in Sitemap.Xml.config as follows:

<pipelines>
  <createSitemapXml>
    <processor type="LD.Sitemap.Xml.Pipelines.DefaultSitemapXmlProcessor, Sitemap.Xml">
      <param desc="The index to use (leave empty to use default index)"></param>
    </processor>
  </createSitemapXml>
</pipelines>

The parameter to the pipeline processor specifies the ContentSearch index to use. If you leave it blank (as in the example configuration), it will default to the index resolved by the contentSearch.getContextIndex pipeline for the managed website's start item. In any case, should you choose to index items by using restrictions on their base template, you should configure your ContentSearch indexes such that they include all templates (in the _temaplates index field), i.e.:

<fields hint="raw:AddComputedIndexField">
  <!-- other computed index fields here... -->
  <field fieldName="_templates" storageType="yes" indexType="untokenized">
    Sitecore.ContentSearch.ComputedFields.AllTemplates, Sitecore.ContentSearch
  </field>
</fields>

Each /configuration/sitecore/site element may have an optional embedLanguage boolean attribute. If this attribute is true (which is the default value), then the processor runs for all installed languages, and produces sitemap nodes which always have the language embedded, e.g. for the same page on a UK/French website:

<loc>http://<domain>.com/en-gb/page1</loc>
<loc>http://<domain>.com/fr-fr/page1</loc>

If, however, you set this attribute to false, then your website must use its domain to distinguish the language and never embeds it into the sitemap nodes, so if for the above website you request http://<domain>.co.uk/sitemap.xml you will get:

<loc>http://<domain>.co.uk/page1</loc>

while http://<domain>.fr/sitemap.xml should give you:

<loc>http://<domain>.fr/page1</loc>

Extending the pipeline

You may choose to customize the pipeline by adding to it one or more pipeline processors that you write, or indeed replace the default processor entirely. This could be because you do not wish to use ContentSearch, or because you may want to index items from sources other than the Sitecore content tree. If you choose to write your own pipeline processor, it should inherit from LD.Sitemap.Xml.Pipelines.CreateSitemapXmlProcessor (in the Sitemap.Xml assembly) and override the Process(CreateSitemapXmlArgs) method. Once you inherit this class, you will have the Configuration property available to you, which is a Dictionary<string, SiteDefinition> containing the configuration for each managed template (i.e. three properties: IncludedTemplates; IncludedBaseTemplates; and ExcludedItems, which are all List<string> containing the configured IDs).

In your Process() method, you are required to add to the args.Nodes list, which is a list of UrlDefinition. UrlDefinitions consist of a string that corresponds to a URL, and a DateTime corresponding to the last modified date/time. The elements you add to this list are added to the final sitemap.xml output.